Within the last week, cannabis farms were uncovered and shut down in Bradford, Huntingdon, Hillsborough and North Shields, with arrests made and sentences pronounced against offenders in Sheffield, Swindon and Hyson Green. With recent complaints that cannabis is such a persistent problem that the smell of it is noticeable in many quarters but left unaddressed, we should consider what benefit there is in continuing with its criminalisation.

Our country’s current predicament with cannabis is frustrating. Some police services have been said to have taken on a policy of de facto decriminalisation due to the need to prioritise enforcement in the face of limited funding and staffing. However, for those services which have continued to police it, they are playing a game of whack-a-mole – when one farm is shut down, another opens elsewhere. The Labour Government’s early release of prisoners to ease prison overcrowding casts doubt on our nation’s capacity to continue incarceration for cannabis offences.

As things stand, the UK’s illegal cannabis industry is releasing an unsafe product into our communities, manufacturing it in hazardous conditions – as can be attested by frequent stories of farm fires – and employing trafficked, coerced labour. Taken together, illegalisation could be said constitute radical deregulation; if someone is willing to make something that is banned outright for profit, they need not concern themselves with best practice. With our town centres and high streets in decline, it is a grave sign that former pound shops and department stores are being utilised by such enterprises.

Our approach to cannabis bears some resemblances to what is perhaps to the best-known cautionary tale about drug criminalisation: Prohibition. Between 1920 and 1933, the sale, transportation, importation and manufacture of alcohol was criminalised in the United States via the Eighteenth Amendment and the enabling Volstead Act, with the inclusion of beer and wine as ‘intoxicating liquor’ leading many Americans to view it as an infringement on individual freedom.

Prohibition increased crime by prompting the development of organised crime groups which engaged in violence and corrupt to maintain control and expanded into other enterprises gambling, prostitution, racketeering, extortion and narcotics (which persist long after Prohibition ended). It increased death rates through gang-related violence and illness caused by unsafe ‘rotgut’ or home distilled alcohol, namely methanol poisoning. It congested the courts and discouraged arrests or prison sentences due to overcrowding. With Prohibition ended in part to bring in extra revenue during the Great Depression, it had resulted in tax losses of $11 billion while costing $300 million to ineffectually enforce.

If we were to heed the example of alcohol prohibition, they are many positive arguments for legalising cannabis, namely increased personal freedom, reduced crime, reduced pressure on our police, courts and prisons, increased safety in manufacture, increased tax revenue and cost effectiveness. The key benefit unique to cannabis would be that the demand for trafficked labour would be reduced.

In terms of revenue, cakeist approaches have proved to be legally fraught. In 2005, Tennessee introduced a ‘crack tax’ which required drug dealers to anonymously pay tax on illegal substances such as cocaine and cannabis. While the tax raised over $6,000,000 in revenue, in 2009 the state’s Supreme Court deemed it unconstitutional as violating the Fifth Amendment. Payment of the tax – for receipt of stamps proving payment – constituted self-incrimination, while charges made for non-payment constituted double jeopardy.

Based on recent YouGov polling, the legal status of cannabis and how we should address it is a controversial issue among the public. While slightly more people favour legalisation than oppose it (45% to 42%) and outrightly for medical purposes (73%), those broadly in favour are divided as to whether it should be decriminalised or legalised when presented with those two options. Conversely, the legalisation of heroin and crack cocaine is strongly opposed (83%).

We in Calderdale have the dubious distinction of a drug-poisoning death rate of 7.6 per 100,000, higher than the England average of five per 100,000, which amounted to 46 such deaths between 2018 and 2020. However, both locally and nationally, cannabis has played little role in these deaths. The bigger culprits are opiates including heroin, morphine and new synthetic opioids – which were responsible for half of all drug-poisoning deaths in England in 2023 – and cocaine – drug-poisoning deaths from which rose by over 30% in 2023.

Our current drug classification system is both highly punitive and subjective. Its three classes are ranked by varying severity of penalty – with possession and supply of Class A being punishable by life in prison or unlimited fines – but take no account of the addictiveness or harmfulness of the drugs it lists. Demonstrating its subjectivity, cannabis was downgraded from Class B to C from 2004 to 2009 and the system excludes socially normalised drugs such as alcohol and tobacco. If cannabis were legalised, it would provide our police services with the funds and time to combat more harmful drugs like opioids and cocaine.